


Salt

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, Concussions, Gen, Head Injury, Horror, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, POV Dean Winchester, Season/Series 07, Stream of Consciousness, Sunburn, blindness/vision loss, cognitive impairment, environmental horror, environmental hurt/comfort, loss of consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-08 09:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4299855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A case goes very south in the middle of a giant salt bed. A concussed Dean goes to find help...ish.  Set early S7.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt

This must be what it's like to walk into a lake and disappear forever. Fuck you, Cas, Dean thinks, though in the long string of things that are Castiel's fault, this isn't one of them. At least, Dean's pretty sure. It'd take a powerful god to fuck their shit up this badly--and anyway, first He'd have to beat Dean to the punch. So no, it's not Castiel's fault. But Dean thinks about Cas, because it's something he does often and well. 

He squints, or winces--honestly, he doesn't know or care which--and tries to imagine the basin in full sunlight instead. Salt shatters underfoot. He keeps walking. Best case scenario, Dean still has to wake up tomorrow wondering why he bothers. Worst, both he and Sam are dead by noon.

 

\--

 

"Dean, fuck, goddamn it" isn't the warbling of songbirds in the morning. But to Sam's credit, it doesn't seem like it's quite morning, either, so it's not like Dean's gonna dock him too badly for his singing voice.

"Will you shut _up_? Hey, Dean--Dean--"

Nausea follows consciousness a little too closely to handle. Dean grabs outward. Finds Sam, or some part of him, and tries to steady himself. Is sick instead. Sam makes a pointed argument that goes something like, Jesus christ oh c'mon hey Dean Dean Dean.

" _Fuck_ ," Dean adds.

"Oh good," says Sam.

Dean's ribs ache and his throat burns. His mouth tastes like shit. And blood. His hands burn. Oh good.

"Don't--go anywhere," Sam wheezes--yes, wheezes; Sam throws him roughly against the car. His head hits the fender. After the tremorous pain at his temples subsides Dean's here enough to be more discerning about his environment. So Sam is not speaking, but wheezing. Also, his hands don't burn; they sting. And they're bleeding. "Don't--" says Sam. Wheezes Sam. Whatever.

He can't open his eyes. There's too much color. Too much motion. Every time he breathes the scene shifts violently he's going to be sick again _oh good_

"Dean." Sam grabs his shoulder, cups his jaw in his other hand. Dean lets himself sink, right through the back doors to consciousness. It feels like slipping through cool water, under the surface of pain and obligation.

" _Dean_ , goddamn it--!" Which feels like Sam snapping his collarbone in half, with his huge sticky fucking hands. Dean makes a sound he did not mean to make (it didn't even hurt _that_ much in the scheme of things). His skull throbs.

"Jus'lemmesleep." There's glass in his throat, at his gums. Given the thick stench of blood in the air, it might not even be an exaggeration.

 

\--

 

Maybe there's a wind he's missing. He scrapes at his eyes again, knuckles raw and cracked and crusted with sharp white salt. There's something in his eyes. Blown into his eyes. But there's no wind.

He can feel east at his back, cruelly warm. His shadow is stark against the white salt. The cracks shatter out from his boots like veins. He thinks about the blood on his hands, itchy, flaking now. Both his and Sam's blood on his hands. 

He just. If he follows the cracks. He just needs to follow the cracks.

 

\--

 

"--plenty of sleep. Dean, hey Dean. Dean." The smack of dry lips with every plosive. Dean thinks Sam is being pretty fucking demanding for someone who's been telling Dean for decades, _sleep, get more_. "Dean, look at me." Dean, look at me. Open your eyes, don't--

Dean cannot, for the life of him, figure out why he fuck he's breathing so hard. He's just trying to open his eyes. He's just trying to--for Sam--

"Don't shake your head at me. Don't you dare shake your--"

His chest hurts. Foremost, his head hurts, is in pieces, but his chest hurts too. And his gut, his knees. His leg--except his leg always hurts, is never, he thinks, going to be the same after, what. After something. He shouldn't have taken that cast off.

"Sam, please," Dean croaks.

"No," says Sam. "Dean, listen to me."

At which point Dean says "Fuck you," or he thinks he does. Except Sam replies, "Yes, you can." _You can you can you can_ , so Dean's thinking probably not.

He can't breathe. He can't--keep his head up, his eyes open. It's like the muscles in his neck have evaporated, he can't.

"Yes, you can, Dean. You can. Please." Please.

Dean wishes he were underwater.  
 "Dean, please," says Sam, and the words sound wet and fractured. And Sam hasn't cried in a long time; Dean figured that part of him had tapped out long ago. He wonders what changed.

 

\--

 

His eyes feel shrunken. That old feeling of glass under his skin. He can't find his shadow. The cracks spread in all directions. The sun is everywhere. His leg throbs, the way it does when it keeps it in one position too long, and Dean realizes he's on his knees. On his hands and knees.

Fuck. Supplication is generally something he tries to avoid. But maybe that's his problem. Maybe this would all be easier if he hadn't tried so damn hard to have principles, or whatever; if he'd just bowed when he had the chance to lose gracefully. Maybe, maybe. He doesn't even know what he's talking about anymore, but he figures specificity is overrated. He's had his chances, Dean thinks, to drown alone. So he thinks about lakes, but not about drowning. He knits his resolve together with whatever he can find, though the result is a frankenstein's monster of jagged pain and vertigo. He grits his teeth.

It's going to be so damn hard to get back up.

 

\--

 

"I can't," everything is too tight and he can't.

"Dean, please."

He's going to be sick again.

"Dean, please _help me_."

"--don't even know you."

Sam's holding him again, pulling him away from the fender and trying to keep him upright. Dean can feel balancing pressure at his shoulders, though he can feel Sam's arms shaking, too. "Yes you do," Sam pants, stricken. "Yes you do, yes you do. It's Sam, you know, your big sasquatch, pain-in-the-ass little brother Sam--"

"Exactly," says Dean, which strengthens the grip on his shoulders. It doesn't feel so good anymore.

"We can't do this right now, Dean. I just--" Sam groans. "Do you know where--don't shake your head-- _don't_ \-- Just tell me. Do you know where we are?"

"You're bleeding."

Sam's grip lessens. "I know, Dean. That's why I need you to help me."

"You're bleeding a lot."

"I know."

Dean makes a slippery fist. "Your blood. How did--"

"That's not really important, Dean," says Sam, his impatience showing now that both their panics have subsided. Dean feels thick, sedated.

"I can't--"

"Shut up, Dean." Testy _and_ exhausted. Dean can work with that. 

Sam abandons Dean's shoulders to their own devices. His fingers crawl up Dean's neck and cut through his hair, prodding. Dean's hand snaps up to halt Sam's incursion.

"You're fine," says Sam, and relents. "You're okay."

Sam's bedside manner is variable, and at the moment not on one of its upswings, but even taking this into account Dean does not feel reassured. "'m I concussed?" he asks. It's either one too hard or one too many; he might be sick again.

" _Oh_ yes," says Sam, and bites the inside of his lip. Grunting, he drags himself away from Dean's face and collapses against the car beside him.

"You're still bleeding," says Dean, when he sees he smear Sam leaves.

"I know."

"How much--?"

Sam just slurs, 'uhhhh' and points to his leg. Whatever adrenaline sustained him to this point is apparently calling it a day, now that the sun's beginning to rise. The rays glance across the salt field beneath them and makes Sam's blood shine bright red.

Salt field. Dumbass hunt they shouldn't have taken. Monster. Monster they were not ready for. Claws. And explosion of crystals. The dissipation of the monster, but not its claws. Its claws still in Sam's leg. The realization that for all their fatalistic luck, they are not infallible. Okay, okay.

Dean's vision blurs and twists when he moves, and everything hurts. Okay. "Hang on, just let me--" His knees burn the way they always do, though what's usually a pain in the ass has promoted itself to crippling torture. Dean sags against the car, uses it as a crutch as he staggers over Sam and to the trunk. He wonders how okay their "okay" really is.  
 "Tighter," Sam hisses, once Dean has retrieved some cloth strips from their med kit, is wrapping his leg. But the throbbing in Dean's head has progressed to war drums in his ears, in his chest, through his bones. Every beat shakes his hands loose. "Tighter."

"'s as tight as it's getting, hotshot. Drink this." 'This' is a warm, flat soda Dean found with the wraps. 

Sam makes a face.

"Hydrate."

"Dean," Sam starts.  
 "The car's fucked," Dean says, and tries to hold the soda against Sam's lips. Keeps goddamn _missing_. "We're gonna need to walk. So drink."

"Dean--"

"Up--" Dean sets the can down and tries to wrench Sam up on to his good leg. Dean can support his left, as they've done for each other a thousand times. They can limp their way across the finish line, like usual. They can figure this out.

It works, for the first few steps, the momentum carrying Sam forward and Dean gamely struggling under him. Then Sam missteps and Dean's knees buckle and the whole operation comes crashing down. Sam is quiet, Dean sees colors, and then hears them. Then he hears Sam.

"This isn't going to work."

Dean doesn't want to hear that.

The way the sunrise flings itself up from the salt flats, it looks like a wall of fire erupting towards them.

Okay.

Dean struggles to his hands and knees, and holds up a fist. "Best two out of three, Sammy. Loser goes for help."

Sam just frowns. _You're a fucking idiot,_ he frowns, and makes a fist.

Dean throws scissors. Sam keeps his fist.

"Round 2," says Dean, and Sam keeps his fist.

Dean throws scissors again. Huh. "I guess you win, Sammy."

Sam punches him in the crook of the elbow, a lackluster sort of prod more than anything else, but Dean's arm gives way and he falls hard.

"Then at least drink your goddamn coke." Sam thrusts his good leg towards the can. "I hate you."

 

\--

 

The sun is rising into his face. He can feel the heat of it bearing down from the sky, up from the salt. His eyes burn and are useless, have been useless. His legs feel like modeling clay, twisted and boneless. Everything feels a little... _less_. Like the lake that used to be here, maybe. The snails that used to move all the small shells he's crushing underfoot. The salt cracks underfoot and sounds like snapping jaws.

East and west aren't themselves anymore; Dean can't keep them in their places, just twists and twists like a piñata. His skin feels dry and there is no wind and he's starting to limp.

East again. Fuck. His stomach roils and his brain feels like less an organ and more like a snail missing its shell. Dean doesn't want to be less. He can't afford to be less. He wants to shove all their broken pieces into working order and ramble on, the way they do. It's the only way they've made it this far. And they still have so much work to do.

"Dean."

Sam. It's Sam. Dean is embarrassingly thrilled before he remembers it's not Sam he's looking for. It's like meeting dead friends in dreams, reuniting with allies who are no longer who you thought they were. Like hope sublimating. It makes a sound like cracking salt.

 

"Dean, what're you doing back here?"


End file.
